by S. Nelson
Copyright © 2020 S. Nelson
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Editor- Hot Tree Editing
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Cover Design – CT Cover Creations
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Proofreader – Judy’s Proofreading
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the publisher’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
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Lincoln/ S.Nelson. -- 1st edition
For all of you who are excited to dive back into their world
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Epilogue
Want More?
The Original KCMC
Stay Informed
Also Available
About the Author
Note to Reader
Acknowledgments
Books by S. Nelson
Prologue
“Rip his head off!”
The crowd cheered around me; their enthusiasm at watching two men trying to kill each other was enough to make anyone think twice about fighting in this underground world. No one who signed up for these bouts aspired to someday make it to the pro MMA, myself included. I did it because I was a fuckin’ machine. I’d been trained to fight since I was thirteen years old. I was precise. Lethal if necessary. While I’d never killed anyone in the ring and had no desire to do so, I’d take all measures necessary to win. The prize money was nothin’ to sneeze at either. It was my way of contributing to our MC.
Focused on besting my opponent, I ignored the outrageous demands of the spectators. Instead, I honed all my training, steadied my nerves, and calmed my breathing, which was a feat in itself given how quickly I danced around the cage, my arms and legs working together to attempt to take this fucker out so I could be done with this fight and look for her.
While I learned never to underestimate my rival, I hadn’t expected this guy, whose name I didn’t care to remember, to last this long. He was at least thirty pounds too heavy, his gut hangin’ over the waistband of his shorts. And while his extra weight slowed his movements, he continued to try and best me, even after I broke two of his ribs. If I had the time to care, I’d respect the bastard for his perseverance.
“End this now, Linc,” Jagger yelled behind me. He shouted something else, but I didn’t hear him, too busy dodging the fist headed straight for the side of my head.
Leaning a few inches to the right, his hand flew past me the same time I hit him with a vicious uppercut, knocking him off his feet. Before he even hit the ground, he was out cold.
There was no time for celebration or showboating the win. I jerked my chin toward Jagger and hopped out of the ring, a flash of dark hair catching my attention in the back of the room.
Before I could tell him to follow me, my feet propelled me toward her, disregarding Marek’s warnings and shoving aside not only my safety but the protection of everyone else in the club.
My brain shut down as my body bristled, every step closer warning me of the consequences.
But I didn’t care.
I had to save her.
1
The metallic aroma of blood infiltrated my nostrils, and while I’d love to say I wasn’t used to the scent, I was. Hell, I was even used to the smell of desperation, but this shit was unbelievable. I stood next to Kaden in a cloud of confusion, staring at the circle of men surrounding Tag, who was strapped to the table and unconscious.
“Stop!” Kaden shouted when Cutter raised his fist to strike the guy again. “What did he do?”
Our president moved away from the table and stalked toward us, his eyes focused solely on his son, his hands clenching into fists the closer he approached. The way he glared at Kaden made both of us take a step back. He looked set to explode, and I didn’t want to be the one to get hit with the aftermath.
When father and son stood toe to toe, Marek growled, “He’s a fuckin’ Reaper.”
His words penetrated my ears, but my brain refused to absorb the words. There was no way Tag was a Reaper, part of that cesspool of a club. From what we’d witnessed during our interactions with them, and from the stories we heard over the years, their moral compass had been destroyed long ago, if it ever existed in the first place.
Not only had Tag moved back home to care for his sick mother, but he’d helped us when a fight broke out at Indulge, and again by giving us a detailed description of two members of the Reapers, the ones we thought were responsible for setting fire at that same strip club. If he was indeed one of them, which I still didn’t believe, why would he set up his brothers? Why would he say something knowing we’d retaliate against our sworn enemy?
My mind drifted back to what Kaden had told me about the night of the blaze, which was that Tag had gone outside to grab his cell from his truck. Then when he came back into the club, he’d pulled Kaden aside to tell him about two shady-lookin’ men he saw come around the side of the building. Not long after, smoke started to fill one of the back rooms of Indulge.
Someone had set a fire, and all things pointed to the Savage Reapers, especially after Tag had described the two guys in detail. They were the same ones we fought after my bout. The same ones who held her hostage.
Was it a coincidence Tag had left Indulge right before the fire started?
Had he helped set it?
Or had he truly only gone outside to grab his phone from his truck?
Was his mother even sick?
Did he even have a mother who was still alive?
The more questions I asked myself, the more confused I became, realizing I didn’t know Tag all that well. But my gut still told me he wasn’t a bad guy. My instincts told me he wasn’t a Reaper like Marek believed.
I pulled a breath deep into my lungs before releasing it. “What makes you think he’s a Reaper?” I asked, careful to keep my tone calm. Marek was wired to blow, and while I didn’t want my simple question to be the reason everything went to shit, I had to ask. The guys were set on killing Tag, their resolve to end his life disturbing. The least our leader could do was give us some sort of justification.
“I know he is.”
“How?” I pushed my luck, but I had to
in order to be able to live with myself afterward. I’d never been involved in ending someone’s life, let alone cold-blooded murder, and I wasn’t about to start now. My inner voice screamed at me to shut up, to trust Marek and the other guys, including my ol’ man. That they wouldn’t do something like this, take such drastic measures unless they felt they had to.
Kaden and I had heard stories about life in the club before the war ended between us and the Reapers, but the tales were edited. I suspected they’d done some bad shit, but whenever we asked them about it, they’d simply say “We handled it” or “We did what we needed to.” They never admitted to killing anyone, and while Kaden and I could only assume that’s what their coded talk meant, we didn’t know for sure.
“Let’s get on with it, Prez,” Hawke shouted, gathering his dark hair and tying it back, his features more prominent without the shield of his strands, the look in his eyes unwavering. Then I looked at Cutter, who was dressed in all black and wielding a large knife, his stare laser-focused. Jagger stood next to him, a look of worry traveling over his face before he looked to my father. They both glanced in our direction, specifically at Marek, before turning their attention back to each other, sharing a look of apprehension. It was like they feared what our leader would do, but more so for his safety, if that made any sense, which it sure as hell didn’t to me.
Kaden grabbed Marek’s arm as he moved to turn away from us. “Dad. What’s goin’ on?” His voice was eerily quiet, but I had a sense he didn’t want to fuel his father’s fury. To add to the direness of the situation, Kaden never called his ol’ man Dad while in the company of the club members. He either called him Prez or occasionally Marek. I adopted the same habit, only referring to my father as ol’ man, Dad or Pops while at home and away from our brothers.
“I told you. He’s a Reaper. He infiltrated our club, and you two”—he looked to me quickly before focusing back on his son—“let it happen.” There was a shroud of rage in Marek’s eyes, but it was more than that. I thought I detected a spark of desperation as well, but I couldn’t be sure because he averted his stare and looked to the ground. His chest rose and fell several times before he picked his head up again. “You need proof?”
Kaden swallowed hard, nodding but appearing unsure if that was the right response.
Marek reached into the inside pocket of his cut and pulled out a picture. He unfolded it and shoved it in his son’s face, his hand shaking with barely controlled anger.
“This is how I know,” he barked, flipping the picture over and jabbing at the words written on the back. I leaned in close to see.
Mom, Dad, Tag.
“I’m not gettin’ it,” I rushed to say, my need to understand this entire situation rushing out of me before I could stop the flow of words.
“Me either.” Kaden reached to touch the picture, but Marek snatched the photo back.
He flipped the picture around and pointed to the man. His sandy-brown hair and lean build made him look like any other guy, but when I examined him closer, I saw the expression on his face, in his eyes, and something disturbed me. He looked disturbed. He wasn’t smiling and stood at least two feet from who appeared to be his woman and baby.
“This bastard right here,” Marek yelled, his finger resting over the image of the man, “tortured your mother.”
2
I didn’t have time to react before Kaden ripped the photo from Marek’s hand, scrutinizing the man in the picture.
“What the fuck are you talkin’ about? Who is this?” he asked, his restraint being slowly plucked apart with every second that passed in silence.
Growing up, Kaden would often tell me that whenever he asked how his parents met, they’d often ignore the question by changing the subject. And on the rare occasion when one of them answered, his mom, Sully, would say she didn’t exist before Marek walked into her life, still refusing to give any other details.
“That,” Marek said, his voice low and tense, “is Vex.” His blue eyes turned to black while he struggled to find an ounce of composure.
“Who is—”
“Vex tortured and abused your mother in every way possible from the time she was fourteen until I rescued her from their clutches.” My focus bounced from Marek to Kaden to everyone else in the fuckin’ room. Cutter, Jagger, Hawke, and my ol’ man shared a look of rage, their body language coiled tightly listening to our leader. Marek removed the picture from his son’s hand, and although he held it tightly, he didn’t look at it again. “Your mom belonged to the Savage Reapers.”
“No.” Kaden vigorously shook his head. “It’s not true.” He took a step away from his dad. “Wh… what does that mean?”
“Her father, Psych, was the president many years ago when our clubs were at war. He’d use his daughter as payment to get what he wanted from other men, even abusing her himself before passing her off to Vex when she was barely a teenager. Whatever awful thing you can think of to do to another human being, they did it without a care for her pain and suffering. She was an object to them, to that entire fuckin’ club.”
Pain weaved through Marek’s voice, the anguish he felt vibrating with every word he spoke about his wife.
“But what does Tag have to do with this Vex guy?” I asked, moving back a step when Marek turned his eyes on me.
“Because he’s his son,” he growled.
“But he didn’t know his dad. The guy left when Tag was a few years old.”
“And how do you know that?” Hawke shouted from across the room, his voice vibrating against all four walls. “’Cause he told ya?”
“Well… yeah.” My shoulders slumped in defeat because there was a possibility Tag wasn’t who he said he was.
“He lied,” Jagger chimed in. “Don’t you think it’s a little too convenient he just so happened to befriend you guys?”
Kaden walked away from me and Marek, heading straight for the guy restrained on the table. When he was close enough, he leaned down and studied him, as if Tag was gonna somehow give him the answers he wanted all without speaking. Hell, all without even being conscious.
“What are you planning on doing?” I asked, aware Marek planned on killing the guy, but I needed to hear his answer, all the same.
“We’re gonna end him like we did Vex and Psych.”
“You killed them both?” Kaden asked, turning back to look at his dad.
“We didn’t only kill ’em. We tortured ’em first… then we sent them to hell for what they did to Sully.” Marek ran his hand over the top of his head several times, and if I wasn’t mistaken, I thought I saw a few more gray hairs sprout up.
“Should we wake him?” Cutter asked, reaching for something on the rolling table behind the one Tag was tied to.
“Yeah.”
One word from our president was enough to make me nauseous because I could only imagine what was gonna happen as soon as Tag opened his eyes.
Without realizing my feet had moved, I soon stood beside my father, swallowing my nerves as best I could. I’d fought some of the biggest and baddest in the ring, and I never felt the urge to vomit beforehand. But now, looking at the sorry state of Tag, not sure whether he was who he said he was, and realizing the severity of what was gonna happen once he woke up, the bile churned in my stomach. The last thing I ever imagined was being privy to a murder tonight, and never in a million years did I think our club would be the one to commit the act.
Cutter waved something under Tag’s nose, and at first, the unconscious man didn’t move, but when he moved his hand back and forth under his nostrils a second time, Tag’s head moved slightly to the side. I assumed he used smelling salts, a pungent substance often used in the ring to either wake someone up after they’d been knocked unconscious or make them more alert if they’d been hit in the head and were on the verge of passing out.
Hearing Tag groan in protest to the potent aroma tugged at something inside me. Was it nerves? Compassion? Guilt? I couldn’t be sure. All I knew was I wanted t
o be anywhere but here right now.
Once he was alert, Tag’s eyes moved to each person until they fell on me. My expression froze because I didn’t want to alarm him any more than he already was. I realized the sentiment may seem odd, but God only knew what was runnin’ through his head.
If he was, in fact, a Reaper and had infiltrated our club for the purpose of gaining information to later use against us, then I was on board with teaching him a lesson. Killing him, though? I was on the fence about that.
But, if he was innocent, his only sin being related to the man who tortured Sully….
I didn’t even know how to complete my thought process on that option.
Marek pushed me aside and moved toward the top of the table, Tag’s eyes following him until they were close in proximity.
“We know you’re a Reaper and we know who your father was.” Marek’s voice cracked with a sinister chuckle. “And we’re gonna end you, just like we did him.” He jerked his chin toward Cutter before taking a step back. In fact, all the men except for me and Kaden retreated as Cutter closed in on Tag, leaning over him with the knife held strategically in his hand. The look in the ol’ man’s eyes unnerved me. He looked like he was absent, as if a wall had gone up inside him. It was the scariest shit I’d ever seen, although I had a feeling I’d retract the statement in the next few minutes.
